


Who Is Responsible When It Becomes a Triangle

by yunyu



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto)-centric, Fix-It of Sorts, Love Triangles, Multi, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 05:34:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15236463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunyu/pseuds/yunyu
Summary: Prompt: "Soulmate AU where just cause you’re soulmates, that doesn’t mean things will be perfect and easy. Maybe Sasuke or Kakashi as anti-soulmate stuff but gradually being okay with it. BAMF Sakura, team 7 friendship & family or romance if you’re going with NaruSakuSasu, but I’d love a happy Team 7 no matter the ship."Thank you @senju-sandwich / DefiantDreams for this prompt! I have always wanted to read a NSS fic with a one-way soulmate closed triangle, so this was like the universe telling me "well if you want to read it you need to write it."Not quite finished but I wanted to get something up before the end of the day. Angst and messiness ahoy, with a cautiously optimistic ending eventually.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exarite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exarite/gifts).



> Title is from song "Two Dots" by Lusine.

Sakura started believing in soulmates at nine years old.

"Why can't we learn something interesting in kunoichi class," Ino said that day, nice and loud so that Suzume-sensei could hear from the other end of the table.

Suzume-sensei, mid-sentence about table manners, paused, looked at Ino, shut her mouth, and opened it again, and shut it again. Someone giggled. The swots and good girls, like Sakura, held back smiles.

Emboldened, Ino added, even louder, "I mean, what's the use of learning about how to drink soup? Don't we all know that already from our families?"

The orphans and the low-class students in the class nodded and laughed even harder at this, so as not to give themselves away.

"Well, what do _you_  think is interesting, Yamanaka Ino?" Suzume-sensei suddenly barked, her curls swaying in stark contrast to the rigidity of the rest of her body.

Ino was not so easily daunted. "Something we haven't learned elsewhere—something exciting! Seduction technique or, or... or soulmates!"

The mention of "soulmates" set a hum and chatter among the girls.

"Yes please do teach us about soulmates!"

"Do they really exist?"

"Course they do; my big sister's got one."

"Girls!" Suzume-sensei shrilly cut through the chorus. "We are here to learn useful etiquette for disguising yourself in your future missions! Soulmates are not useful for kunoichi!"

The teacher never really got it together after that, and the class ended with the bell, but Sakura learned that soulmates were real. And when she filed back into the the classroom and eyed the dark, sharp hair of Sasuke-kun, she knew who hers must be.

———

Sasuke started believing in soulmates at seven years old.

"Mama," he said, as his mother tucked him into bed, "what is Ayako?"

His mother nearly stumbled, first in her movements--an impossible thing for the effortlessly graceful kunoichi--and then in her words: "Nobody. Who told you...? Nobody."

"But Father has it written on him," Sasuke protested, internally hoping for a praise on how clever he was to be able to work out the kana he had seen written on his father's chest represented a name.

"Nobody," repeated Mikoto, distressed. "I think you're old enough to bathe without your father from now on. Goodnight."

"Nii-san," he managed to say to his brother's disappearing back some days later, "wait, Nii-san!"

To his delight, Itachi paused and looked back.

"Do you know what is Ayako?" Maybe it wasn't a name after all.

Itachi looked down at him. "You saw it written...?"

"On Father," Sasuke agreed eagerly.

"Did you ask Father?"

"No.. Father doesn't... I asked Mama, but she was unhappy..."

Itachi also looked unhappy, in the very slight downturn of his mouth. "You'll learn when you're older how an Uchiha earns their eyes."

"But I want to know _now_ ," Sasuke protested as Itachi started to turn to go. "Why do you always say later, later, later, Nii-san! If you tell me now, I can practice for later!"

All he got were fingers to the forehead, until a horrible night sometime later.

"Foolish little brother," his parents' murderer said, "you want to know how to get eyes like mine? By killing the one whose name appears on your chest—your soulmate."

———

Naruto started believing in soulmates at four years old.

"What?! Why ya gotta choose _him_?" Naruto screamed at the new parents leading the toddler away at the orphanage. "He still pees in a diaper -ttebayo! He's not a big boy like me! I wouldn't make any mess or... well, some mess, but I'd help clean up..."

The two new parents only rushed away faster. The blond's shoulders slumped.

"Naruto-chan," creaked the tremulous voice of his foster mother, Kaede-baa-chan. "Shall I tell you a secret?"

The little jinchuuriki clambered up into the ancient woman's lap. She only smiled, despite the pain of the cancer in her bones.

"You're soon to age out of the orphanage, my boy," she said. "But don't worry about that. Whether you get parents or not, one day, a name will appear here." She traced a line over his heart. "And that will be the one who will be your heart's joy, the only one who can make you truly happy in this world. And once their name is on your chest, when you touch them..." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Your fingers will glow."

"Really?" Naruto whispered back enthralled.

"It isn't real for everyone," Kaede-baa-chan conceded, "but I believe it will be for you. There will be someone out there who is special—oh, but VERY special!"

"And I'll be special for them too dattebayo!"

———

Kakashi was twenty-six when he told his three cute little genin that soulmates were a lot of bullshit.

"Ninja don't get soulmates," he said brutally. "Ninja can't find happiness in another person, and ninja don't get happy endings."

"Didn't any of the Hokage have soulmates?" Naruto asked, or more challenged. Sakura looked destroyed. Sasuke wasn't looking at any of them.

Kakashi thought of Minato-sensei, whose flame-haired bride somehow unleashed the beast that killed them both.

He thought of Lord Third, who lost his wife in the same attack.

He thought of Lord Second, who died alone, and Lord First, whom they said was dead inside from the moment Uchiha Madara left the village.

"None of them," Kakashi lied.

Naruto huffed. "Well! I'm gonna be the first Hokage with a soulmate then 'ttebayo!"

———

Sakura's fingers glowed first, wrapped around a cursed boy in the Forest of Death.

Sasuke's fingers glowed second, as his face hovered over an unconscious boy in the Final Valley.

As for Naruto's fingers, they didn't glow until a pink-haired girl embraced him in the hospital and told him that next time they'd rescue Sasuke together.

Kakashi, sitting outside on the hospital windowsill, let out an unheard breath.

 _Well,_ he thought to himself, _this is another fucking disaster._


	2. Chapter 2

A good shinobi team is like a wheel, impermeable, a single entity, which turns and turns in unity with itself, destroying all obstacles.

The three students of the original team 7 became a triangle, stretched out over the nations. Two dots looking at each other, and also looking at each other looking at the third dot, who is refusing to look.

The two who eventually came back together in Konoha felt their incompleteness. Naruto wanted Sakura, who wanted Sasuke; he wanted Sasuke back, to make Sakura happy but also because of a strange pull that he couldn't come up with a word for other than "friendship". Sakura came to love and admire Naruto too, but Naruto accepted that love only partly, always thinking of his promise.

Five years passed between the parting and the true reunion.

When they came back together at last to fight Kaguya, it was still a strange triangle, a weird waltz, with the additional off-beats of Kakashi and Obito. There's still some kind of strange unity among the three younger shinobi, though, propelling them as a team-not-team. It may not have been a wheel, but it was still flipping clunkily forward from the sheer force of the three personalities.

Nobody missed the glow of Kakashi's fingers when he touched Obito, or that Obito's fingers didn't glow in return. No one mentioned it aloud.

All throughout, Sasuke treated Sakura as irrelevant to the grand and fatal destiny of Naruto and himself. Even after she ignored the acid burns on her arm and pushed herself to the brink of chakra exhaustion to rescue Sasuke from another dimension.

Naruto was more than fed up when Sakura and Kakashi nearly fell into lava because of Sasuke. "What the fuck, Sasuke? I can fly! Save Sakura-chan and Kakashi-sensei instead!"

"I'm just being logical," Sasuke told them all and himself. "It doesn't actually matter what happens to them, but if we die, then—"

"That's a lot of bullshit!" Naruto interrupted. "Obito sacrificed himself to save Kakashi-sensei, so why don't you give a damn about Sakura-chan?!"

"I didn't spare you for being my soulmate five years ago," Sasuke said coldly, "and I'm not saving you now for being my soulmate. Until Kaguya is sealed, I need you alive."

Sasuke won, with Naruto and Sakura.

Sasuke knocked out Sakura but lost against Naruto. But when he realized he had lost, he smiled.

He smiled again as he silently submitted to a chakra sealing straightjacket and blindfold, while outside the tent the party celebrating the end of the war roared. And then, he was returned to Konoha.

Kakashi shuffled into Sasuke's cell and observed the prisoner sitting on his bunk for a moment before reaching out and taking off the eye covering.

Sasuke blinked a moment, adjusting to the dim light to focus on Kakashi. "I thought you hated repeating yourself."

"It is a little bit of deja vu," Kakashi admitted. "I wish I had tried to talk to you more when you weren't tied up."

"It wouldn't have changed anything."

Kakashi sat next to him on the bunk, so that neither had to look at the other directly. "Probably not."

"So what are you here to lecture me about this time? Or is it another interrogation?"

Kakashi hummed. "Actually, I was wondering if there was anything you wanted to ask me, or tell me. Not as an interrogation. Just that you've had a lot of time in here to think, and things may have occurred to you."

"Is Naruto the Hokage yet?"

"No, he still has some maturing to do, we feel."

Sasuke grunted. "You should just let him do it. He can't do worse than the other Kage."

Kakashi considered telling him that he himself had been tapped as interim Hokage, but opted instead to give Sasuke some silence to see if he would speak again.

He did. "So... Obito was your soulmate."

"Yes."

"And you weren't his."

"No."

Sasuke moved a toe up and down slightly. "Did you know back then?"

"Not until he died—until I thought he died, in the cave. When I touched him then." It goes against the grain for Kakashi to volunteer information, but he forced himself to. "His soulmate was the third member of our team, Rin. And I was hers."

Sasuke is no more prone to confession than Kakashi, but in the dim silence, he said, "Like me, Naruto, and Sakura."

"In some ways, but in other ways the relationship between my team couldn't have been more different than yours. You know, I always saw so much of myself in you," Kakashi said. "But I think now that maybe that wasn't for the best. I overlooked what was different about us, and I presumed too much about what was actually important."

"When I... when we... our team..." Sasuke tilted his head down. "When you tied me up to the tree that day to lecture me, I was already gone. Everything you said about how similar we were, and trying to give me your own experience, just made things worse. My pain... my pain was a worse prison than these seals and these walls, it was agony... but it was the only thing I had. If I were to admit, even for a moment, that my pain wasn't special, then what did I have left? It was a prison, but... prisoners are safe. Prisons keep people out, as much as in." He tilted his head back up. "What happened to Rin?"

"She put herself in the line of my chidori in order to keep herself from being used as a time bomb against Konoha. That was Madara meddling again; he'd done it to get her killed in front of Obito, to make him believe that peace was impossible."

"I still don't know that he was wrong about that part. Just his proposed solution was wrong... and mine, I already admitted it." His tone at the end had just a hint of defensiveness.

Kakashi chose silence again, and was rewarded with another little scrap of vulnerability from Sasuke.

"Was Rin... like Sakura?"

"She was like Sakura in the same way that you're like me," Kakashi replied. "Superficially, very similar. A medic nin, the only girl, no special clan or kekkei genkai. Diligent and dutiful. And kind. I... was angry at her, when I found out I was her soulmate and not Obito."

Kakashi paused as Sasuke shifted, but since no interruption came, he continued.

"At the time I thought it was justified... that it was because it wasn't the time to talk about things like romance, with the war and having just lost Obito. Gradually, I came to realize that I was angry at her for not choosing Obito instead... surely Obito deserved her love and affection... but actually that wasn't it either. It was complicated, it was both of them and my feelings for both of them... I loved Obito and he was so much better than me in the ways that mattered most, so for her to choose me was like..."

"To be loved for the parts of you that were loathsome? Or else to be mistaken for something you aren't, and therefore not really loved at all." Sasuke said in Kakashi's pause.

"Something like that," Kakashi said, "Since she died so young though, I never had a chance to really get to know the real her. I didn't have the chance with Obito, either."

He paused again, but Sasuke took the pause to change the subject.

"I suppose I'll be in here for years then, until Naruto matures," he said.

"No. I can't make promises yet, but if things continue on the current path, you may be out very soon."

In fact, Sasuke was out by the end of the month.

He touched Sakura's forehead at the gate, said "maybe next time," and started off.

A little further down the path he ran into Naruto.

"Didn't think you'd come to see me off," Sasuke said, which was a lie.

"Here." Naruto stretched out his single hand with Sasuke's defaced forehead protector.

"You still had this thing, all this time?"

"Yeah, now I'm giving it back dattebayo."

"Dobe, if I wear that, I'll be proclaiming myself a missing nin, you know. I thought I was a Konoha nin now?"

Naruto looked down at the scratched out Konoha symbol as if he'd never noticed it. "Oh. I didn't think of that."

"You fucking moron." Sasuke took the forehead protector quickly, avoiding any incidental contact that might cause his fingers to glow, and tucked the protector into this belt. "I'll keep it to remind me of what an idiot beat me, so I'll be motivated to get stronger."

"Hey, hey, hey!" sputtered Naruto. "Where are you going, anyway? I don't get it!"

Sasuke repeated his lines about seeing the world, atonement, and investigation.

"Seeing the world? I saw a lot of the world with Pervy Sage and it didn't help me a _bit_ with my ninjutsu, dattebayo. As for atonement... I dunno really what that means... but if there's investigating to be done, you should take me with you!"

"No."

"Why not?!"

"Because... you're an idiot."

"The idiot who _beat you!_ "

"Even if I needed _dumb force_ ," Sasuke said, "you've only got one arm."

"So do you! And I can manifest arms, anyway." Naruto needlessly demonstrated this with his Kurama cloak.

They both sensed a familiar chakra approaching from the short distance away.

"What's going on?" Sakura demanded of Naruto. "You're not trying to fight Sasuke-kun, are you?!"

Naruto instantly turned off Kurama cloak mode. "Nah, Sakura-chan, I was just showing that I don't need an arm to beat him! So if he's going to find threats, then he _should_ take me, dattebayo!"

Sakura looked between the two of them and bit her lip. "Well," she told Sasuke's shoulder or perhaps elbow, "maybe you should take him... I mean, it'd be good for Naruto too, to... mature and learn... so that he can be a good Hokage."

Sasuke looked at Sakura, not meeting his eyes, and then at Naruto, who was looking at Sakura.

"Well, if I'm taking the dobe along, I guess Sakura had better come too," he said. "To heal Naruto after I beat him half to death for being an usuratonkachi."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that the lava world part of the fight was before Obito's cookie crumbled, but it works better for my story this way.


End file.
